


empty your sadness // on my bedroom floor

by beli_mawr



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Asexual Alana Maxwell, Bad Parenting, Found Family, Homophobia, IRLs found me last time; jokes on you i have no shame, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Maybe - Freeform, Misgendering, Non-Binary Daniel Jacobi, Nonbinary Character, Pre-Canon, Religious Content, Religious Guilt, Trans Daniel Jacobi, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, alex's playin fast & lose with canon (again), am i projecting my childhood trauma onto them?, deadnaming, in flashbacks, trans alana maxwell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29920938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beli_mawr/pseuds/beli_mawr
Summary: "It becomes an unspoken rule (after Maxwell hits Jacobi after they say something stupid in the middle of a mission) that they don't talk about their childhoods, or their families; it suits them just fine, and somewhere along the way they become a strange little family, in the loosest sense of the word.There's always an exception to a rule though, isn't there?"
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler, Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler & Alana Maxwell, Warren Kepler & Alana Maxwell
Kudos: 5





	empty your sadness // on my bedroom floor

**Author's Note:**

> titles from 'the kid's aren't alright' - fall out boy
> 
> yes niah, before you ask, this is a rewrite of that thing from my old account

There's a certain way of looking at events in your past that makes you miss them. Call it rose-tinted glasses, call it nostalgia, call it whatever you like; it causes the feeling you get when you look back on your childhood and think ' _wow, I miss that'_.

Daniel Jacobi does not possess this way of looking at things. Neither do Warren Kepler and Alana Maxwell. 

If you were to ask any of them, they'd all say something along the lines of 'the past is the past'; Kepler would probably throw in some absurd story that would lead about five miles away from the original question and make you wish you'd never asked in the first place, Maxwell would almost definitely ignore you, and Jacobi would make a joke that would be downright concerning coming from anyone other than him. They have, in fact, all done these things, on various occasions, when conversations while bored on stakeouts strayed a bit too close to being about something important.

It becomes an unspoken rule (after Maxwell hits Jacobi after they say something stupid in the middle of a mission) that they don't talk about their childhoods, or their families; it suits them just fine, and somewhere along the way they become a strange little family, in the loosest sense of the word. 

There's always an exception to a rule though, isn't there?

* * * 

The first time it happens it's, surprisingly, Kepler. They're in Chicago for a mission, May of 2012, and neither Jacobi or Maxwell miss the way Kepler tenses slightly as he pulls into the motel they're staying at, though neither of them bring it up. They share a look and mutually decided that they do _not_ need to know badly enough to risk asking, though Alana can tell by the look on their face that Jacobi is beyond curious and shakes her head violently when Kepler isn't looking. 

By the time they actually get to their room it's impossible for either of them to pretend not to notice the look on Kepler's face - he looks like he's been slapped, or eaten something sour (they discovered, on the same day that Alana was banned from cooking indefinitely, that Kepler hated sour things. Neither of them was sure if those two things were related, and at the time Jacobi couldn't stop laughing for long enough to ask.) Maxwell refuses to ask on principle, or that's what she tells Jacobi when Kepler goes back to the car to grab 'some piece of equipment he'd forgotten' (it was his phone charger, but lets the others believe it was something important to the mission); Jacobi figures she's probably just got more self-preservation skills than they do and says a quick 'fuck it' to their facade of not giving a shit about anything - nobody really falls for it anymore but he likes to think they do - other than explosives and the occasional random hobby they pick up that usually doesn't last longer than a week (their current one being crochet - Alana takes every opportunity to call them an old hag, which had led to a few mock-fights and a few more almost-broken sets of glasses and ornaments when they'd whack each other with the closest soft object.)

Kepler comes back, carrying the flash drive he'd pretended to go back for, and avoids looking out of the window; he pulls a chair out to sit down, stops as if he's thinking, and shuts the curtain. Maxwell, sat next to Jacobi on foot of one of the beds, nudges them in the ribs, and Jacobi yelps as they nearly fall onto the floor.

"Is there a problem, Mx Jacobi?" 

"No. Sir. I- well, we," Alana elbows them in the side again, pulling a face that looked more than slightly betrayed, " _we_ were just wondering if, well, if you're alright?"

Silence, for long enough that Maxwell starts mentally writing their obituary, before Kepler lets go of the curtain and answers.

"Why wouldn't I be?" When he doesn't get an answer, he turns away from the window, looking considerably calmer than he had previously, but still noticeably tense to Jacobi, who has known him for just over a year at this point and had spent more of that time than they should have watching him and learning his mannerisms. (Alana comments on his 'crush' far more than she has any right to.)

"Well? No shot, Mx Jacobi. Dr Maxwell, better answer; _any_ answer, actually?"

"Well, we just, we noticed, you seem kind of-"

"If I were you, I'd think carefully about how you're going to finish that sentence, Dr Maxwell."

"Pissed off?" Jacobi suggests, and Alana can't decide if she wants to slap him or thank him.

"Pissed off?" Kepler sounds amused, which is _probably_ a good thing? Though, thinking about it, he'd sounded amused when he sent Jacobi on three extra laps of their training course for making a sarcastic comment last week, so maybe not so much.

"More so than usual, sir." Jacobi responds and _dear god please stop talking Daniel._

Maxwell puts her head in her hands and asks herself if she's about to witness a murder, and briefly wonders if it'll be one of Kepler's ''fifty ways to kill a person and not leave behind any evidence" or if he'll just straight up shoot Daniel. Jacobi, still looking at Kepler, sees the man's amused look, and is only slightly less concerned about being shot. 

Kepler doesn't shoot Jacobi - the thought hadn't crossed his mind for more than a split second, actually - but he does start laughing, bitterly, and Maxwell sits up very quickly in surprise. Jacobi glances over at her, questioning and more than slightly concerned, but she's just as (maybe more, actually) confused as they are. 

_"Pissed_ _off._ " Kepler says, still laughing, sounding far less amused than he had a minute before and unnerving Maxwell and Jacobi who had heard him laugh like this once and twice respectfully. "Got it in one Jacobi, congratulations. _Yes,_ I'm 'pissed off' as you so eloquently put it."

"Um," and Maxwell thinks, for the second time in a very short space of time, that Jacobi is not going to leave this hotel room alive, but they keep talking and there's nothing she can do, so, "why?"

Kepler considers not answering. This very firmly falls into the category of _things they don't talk about,_ but, well. Maybe he wants to talk about it; he's never really been able to before, and they're - though he wouldn't admit it at gunpoint - probably the closest thing he's ever had to a family. He doesn't need to go into details; that would definitely be crossing the invisible line in the sand, and there's a point he won't pass for fear of no return.

"I ever tell you I grew up in Chicago?" He sees the look of realisation pass over Maxwell's face, and Jacobi's a second later. "That church? The real pretty one across the road - we drove past it on our way in here? I got baptized there. Did the whole communion, confessions, all that shit, there too."

"I thought you weren't religious?" It'd come up before - of course it had, because apparently the world owed Warren Kepler nothing but difficulty - when Jacobi had been talking about Hanukkah last year. 

"I'm not."

* * *

1993

_"Warren! We're going to be late!"_

_He can hear his mother calling him - has been able to for the past five minutes, actually - but he doesn't respond, staying hidden in the corner of the loft. She's calling him to go to church, and he's told her every Sunday and holiday since he was fourteen that he does not want to go; she's deluded herself into thinking he's going through a rebellious phase. He doesn't want to think about the fact that she might be right. He still goes to confession sometimes - not with her, certainly not with his father - but sometimes he feels like he has to, to appease the God he isn't even sure exists; maybe to appease the dad who unfortunately does. Although, his dad doesn't know, so it can't really be because of that. He doesn't know why he goes. Guilt, maybe? A sense of duty? Indoctrination as a child? Probably that._

_He's pretty sure they won't look for him up here; it's one of his only hiding places in the house that hadn't been discovered yet, which proved to be extremely handy when his parents came home early from a date night three nights before and he had a boy in his bed. He's done that one before, and really, really, doesn't want to redo the 'talking to' (as his father called it to his mother) that happened afterwards, and is even less keen to repeat the not being let out of his parents’ sight for three weeks and two days - exactly how long it had taken him to convince them that he was definitely not gay and it was just a mistake and that he was, in fact, the perfect Catholic boy they expected him to be. Not a single word of it was true, but they seemed to buy it - probably because they didn't want to consider the possibility that he was lying and found it easier to pretend it just hadn't happened._

_He's very, very aware he would not get let off so lightly if it happened a second time - for one, he’s not a fucking idiot, and for two, his dad had made as much explicitly clear at some point in between the screaming and the first slap._

_So, he learned to be very fucking careful, and he definitely doesn't go to confession with his parents, because he knows if he did, he wouldn't be able to lie in front of Him and then the cat would well and fucking truly be out of the bag. He thanks- not God. Something, that the priest he talks to when he does go alone doesn't like his parents and seems to respect that the things he says are private, meant for no one's ears but- well. No one's ears, because Warren is fairly sure God doesn't exist at this point, and even if he doubted that (he does) he wouldn't let himself; because that would mean that, maybe, all the shit his dad said about him being a sinner and an abomination were true. On some level he knows his dad's just a religious nut with a stubborn streak a mile wide and an inferiority complex that means even his wife or kid talking back to him usually ends very badly for all involved that isn't himself; on another, more deeply embedded and infinitely harder to dislodge level, he believes every single word his dad tells him is true. It's quite difficult, sometimes actively impossible, to figure out whether what he's thinking is his father's words or his own thoughts._

_Eventually, later that year, he gets caught again - it was going to happen eventually; except this time his father, back from a business trip only an hour before, didn't go off at Warren - he went off at his mom, and Warren had had enough by this point on both of their behalf; so after his dad falls asleep on the couch and he takes his mom to her sister's house with as much of her stuff as they can carry, he takes what he needs, makes sure his mom has an alibi, sets the house ablaze behind him and gets the hell out of dodge. He hopped the bus to O'Hare Airport, bought a ticket to LaGuardia, and aside from calling his mom to check on her, never looked back._

_Someone he hadn't met yet would be proud of him, if they knew._

**Author's Note:**

> kudos, comments, etc are appreciated if you want  
> once again let me know if I need to add any tags please


End file.
